The next six hours were the most frustrating of Kyle’s life. Every time a fog corpse appeared in their path, Blake’s wives reached it first. Every time a star stone dropped, Kyle had to pretend it was normal by kicking debris over it before Blake’s team noticed. Every cluster of corpses that his signature attracted had to be redirected, scattered, or avoided entirely because a hundred percent drop rate in front of witnesses would expose the one secret keeping his household alive.By late afternoon, the fog had thickened to category three and the light was failing. Bianca spotted two highway villas sitting side by side on an elevated stretch of road, connected by a shared parking structure. Blake’s group took the right villa. Kyle’s took the left.“We stay here for the night,” Kyle told the group once the doors were sealed. “Blake’s team is in the other building. Nobody crosses the parking structure. Nobody talks to his wives. Nobody gives him anything he can use.”“And you?” Scarlett f

The clock on the terminal read 12:59 when Kyle’s fingers stopped moving over the keyboard.He had been typing a reply to Wren’s message, something sharp and dismissive about how opening windows for mysterious women at one in the morning was not part of his survival plan. The words were half formed on the screen, his thumbs hovering over the keys.Then his mind went blank.Not slowly. Not gradually. Like someone had reached inside his skull and flipped a switch. One second he was sitting in bed with the terminal in his hands and a sarcastic reply loaded on his tongue. The next, his thoughts were gone. His eyes were open but seeing nothing. His body moved on its own, setting the terminal down on the nightstand with careful, mechanical precision, swinging his legs off the bed, and standing up.He walked to the window. His hands found the latch. His fingers began to turn it, slow and deliberate, the movements smooth and practiced like a routine he had performed a hundred times before.The

Nora’s flat eyes moved from Hailey to Blake and back again. Her expression carried the subtle discomfort of a woman who had been dragged out of bed for a lie she had not been briefed on.“I didn’t hear anything.” Nora’s voice was low and blunt. “Blake said he heard something. I came because he asked.”The silence that followed was heavy enough to have its own gravity.Blake’s smile flickered for one tenth of a second. “Well, it could have been the fog. Sound carries strangely in category three density. I just wanted to make sure everyone was safe.”“Everyone is safe.” Hailey’s voice was polite but final. “Thank you for checking.”She closed the door before Blake could add another word. The lock clicked. Bianca’s blade stayed up for ten more seconds before she lowered it.Kyle waited until Blake’s footsteps faded across the parking structure. Then he turned to the group.“Personal space. Now. All of us.”The portal opened in the hallway. All six of them stepped through into the warm gra

What he got instead was a night that made the cloud bed with Scarlett feel like a warm up act. Bianca’s panther instincts bled through fully in the dark, her tail wrapping around his waist within the first minute and staying there the entire time, tightening and loosening in rhythm with her breathing. Her ears emerged soft and pointed, and when Kyle’s fingers found them, the purring that rolled through her chest vibrated the entire bed frame.She was not gentle. She was not careful. She was deliberate, focused, and thorough in the way she approached everything, from combat to cooking to the man lying beneath her in a cabin she had built in his dimension without asking permission.Kyle lost track of time somewhere around the second hour and did not find it again until his terminal alarm went off at seven in the morning with a sound so sharp it made them both flinch.“Morning.” Kyle lay flat on his back, staring at the wooden ceiling, his body humming with a warmth that had settled into

Kyle leaned against the doorframe with his arms folded and Blake’s warm smile filling his field of vision, and inside his skull the mechanical voice was still humming like a radio left on between stations.“Actually, Blake.” Kyle pushed off the frame and stepped outside. “I’ve been thinking about your offer. A joint hunt sounds useful. We could cover more ground with two teams.”Blake’s eyebrows lifted. Genuine surprise, or close enough to fool anyone who was not currently reading his mail from inside his own head.“Really?” Blake placed one hand over his chest. “Kyle, that means a lot. I know things between our households have been tense, and I want you to know that my only interest is in being a good neighbor.”[System Update: Target household accepting cooperation. Recommend passive scanning during joint operation. Priority targets Vivian Cross and Riley Fox will be within projection range for the full duration.]Kyle heard every word. The mechanical voice fed directly into his fiv